Columnists
Normal life matters
I wonder exactly when we agreed that it is more of a priority to gather with strangers than to meet…
The Spectator’s Notes
‘Interior silence’ is not a phrase I associate with Sarah Sands, until recently the editor of the BBC Today programme…
The double-decker in the room
‘If anybody can write an interesting column about buses, Matthew,’ the then comment editor on the Times told me decades…
The Spectator’s Notes
As the former editor of a Sunday newspaper, I know their front pages can be rather confected. There is sometimes…
Making the facts fit the narrative
Distracted by vaccine warfare, for once the British haven’t leapt onto America’s latest bandwagon of fake self-excoriation. Following last week’s…
The chips are down for a new era of fractured trade
Just as the auto industry embraces the electric future I wrote about last month, it hits a new crisis: a…
Eight reasons to leave the UK
We commemorated one year of lockdown by sacrificing a goat to the Highly Revered Virus Deity on a hastily assembled…
Sturgeon fights on – but time is against her
A year ago this week Alex Salmond was acquitted on all 13 charges in his sexual assault trial. In normal…
This tangled tale of Greensill and Gupta may hide systemic dangers
Historians of unforeseen crises talk about ‘chaos theory’ and the ‘butterfly effect’, in which a small perturbation far away —…
The Spectator’s Notes
The recently departed head of MI6, Sir Alex Younger, wants to balance China’s ideological antagonism to the West with the…
The C of E’s new religion
With a heavy heart I must return once more to the subject of the Church of England. I recognise that…
The politicisation of Sarah Everard’s death
A woman called Jenny Jones, now elevated to Baroness Moonbeam, or something, in the House of Lords has proposed a…
Europe’s reckless caution
The first smear campaign against AstraZeneca, when Emmanuel Macron falsely claimed at the start of the year that the jab…
How to kill the English language
Probably, most of you will have only the dimmest idea what a ‘fronted adverbial’ is. I used one in the…
The West has lost its moral high ground
International travellers running the gauntlet of English airports must already test negative for Covid before the flight, and on return…
Spacs and the City: if London won’t, Amsterdam will
This column generally takes a sceptical view of financial novelties and gimmicks. So my antennae have twitched in recent days…
The Spectator’s Notes
I have been slow in the uptake. When I saw the Duchess of Sussex complain in her interview clips about…
To the moon – and back
I have just applied to fly around the moon. My chances of being selected are slim, but is it impossible?…
There’s no ‘my’ in truth
Caroline Rose Giuliani, the daughter of the former mayor of New York, Rudy, has been talking to the press about…
The shifting sands of Scotland
Every politician likes to say that they don’t pay attention to opinion polls. In my experience, this is almost universally…
The Spectator’s Notes
In 2000, this magazine dipped its toe in murky Irish water. Stephen Glover wrote three articles, one provocatively entitled ‘The…
Reinventing the wheel
For most London-based politicians, there’s a threat that’s worse than Covid. You’ll begin to notice it as we ease out…
The case for keeping business taxes low, simple and competitive
Why should business pay tax at all? That’s a provocative but forlorn question to ask in Budget week. Business pays…
The real reasons children are going hungry
‘We’re idiots, babe, it’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves.’ I listened to The Food Programme on Radio 4…
The Covid recovery Budget
Barely a year has passed since Rishi Sunak’s first Budget. Its centrepiece was a £30 billion stimulus designed to calm…
